YarnCon 2014: the Haul

The Incredibly-Patient-Mother popped up for a weekend with the Philosopher and I and was my dutiful companion to YarnCon 2014, sparing said P a trip. Someone had gone out to several birthday parties the night before and was home sleeping while I was doing this yarn shopping. This means that said someone didn't get to pick out any wool for himself this year.  Considering I have at least 4 skeins set aside for him off the top of my head, I think he'll be okay though.

Anywho, it continues to be a nice local conference and it was nice to see Shannon Okey. IPM and I went on Sunday and Shannon's booth for Cooperative Press was seriously picked over. I watched a store owner nearly fully wipe out the rest of the books that Shannon had and was a little sad that some of the books I'd wanted to see in person were gone. Thrilled for her of course, I'm sure she was very pleased not to have to take the books home and I've no doubt that lack of weight equaled better gas mileage but *sigh*...

The IPM noticed that, in the years she's been going with Sibling-the-Elder and I to yarn conferences, the average age of attendees has gone down. I still feel a little out of place at them, as though I don't display enough knitwear (only my giant alpaca cowl), or have felted earrings (not my thing), or strangely dyed hair (hot pink was in this year).  But generally everyone is happy there and we're all people of the skein, one way or another.

After a circle through the booths and showing off my finished kerchief to Emily P of Sophie's Toes (the dyer), I ended up buying yarn at the same two dyers as last year: Sophie's Toes and Fleur de Fiber.

Emily had some magic cakes this year that were really beautiful and I'm still debating if I want to get one in the Mardi Gras colorway. I picked it up and set it down about three different times.  She'll have them in her Etsy store soon.  I haven't really seen a whole lot of appeal in making a magic cake myself, though I certainly have enough sock yarn leftovers and heaven knows most of those colors go together (oh look, blue, green, blue, purple, blue, green, purple, green....)

The IPM picked out a skein for another scarf for her, pattern to be determined by me:



This is the Miss Molly colorway, which is the name of one of the dyer's daughters.



I love the vibrancy of all of the different colors and I'm looking forward to finding something in the scarf persuasion that will do it justice.

I also picked up this very minty skein


The colorway is Whale Watch and I'd figured it for the the Philosopher but he suggested it might be too spearmint for him. So it'll probably go into becoming a pair of socks and end up sprucing up feet rather than a neck.

Over at Fleur de Fiber, she had the silk hankies again this year but as I've not touched last years I decided to stick to yarn.  This skein, if I were still in Wisconsin, would probably have been highly fought over. As it is, I don't know any Green Bay Packers fans in Chicago and so while I imagine it will be socks, I'm curious as to who it will be socks for...





The three skeins together definitely screamed my need for green and spring colors.

I'm hoping to get to WI Sheep and Wool this fall to see Ewetopia Fiber Arts and Fiber Optic. I am a dedicated little yarn groupie. :)